I created a breakout board for the Lantronix MatchPort embedded WiFi module a while back and didn’t get around to posting the board files. The breakout board is needed to go from the 2 mm pins on the module to the 0.1 inch pin spacing on a solderless breadboard. I recommend using female headers to mount the MatchPort, rather than soldering it in permanently. Use Eagle to output Gerber files for manufacturing the MatchPort breakout board v1.02.
Let’s talk about Josh Karpf. Josh and I both went to Oberlin, where we did our undergrad. The majority of my memories of him are of his flyaway Warholesque hair and a minority are about the unusual objects he kept in a pencil cup. Anyway, a number of years after we graduated I was perusing the still-nascent web and stumbled across a “site-of-the-day” depicting martinis made from meat. It was linked to from everywhere which was possible then because the Internet was still pretty small. Something seemed familiar, and then the realization flashed on me that I knew the guy who had done this. It was Josh, the dude with that hair, and it turns out his carnivore’s cocktail had taken the 1997 Internet by storm. Within a week or two it was all over the web’s list of weird, strange, new, looney, worst and best sites. The pork martini was a meme and by chance, I was on a first name basis with the source. Josh has since updated the site with new pictures and a somewhat more modern look. The other white meat martini lives on.
In the days and years that passed, when martinis or pork come up on conversation I often find myself defending Josh’s explorations to those who would close their mind to a martini made of meat. I encourage them to consider a trial swig but usually they defer. Naturally, a few of my friends get a free pass. They’re vegans, so tasting a pork martini is out of the question.
Until now.
Presenting an animal-free homage to Josh’s porcine concoction, devised as my last day-long project of 7 in 7. He’s a rabid carnivore so I doubt we’d ever get his full endorsement, but adventerous vegetarians and vegans can now quaff a meat-like drink without fear of sullying their fauna-free repasts. I give you the Vegan Pork Martini:
The Source
Ingredients
Infusion
The Meatless Pork Martini, BBQ Pork and Bacon Strip varieties
Bold Tasters
Kudos to the May Wah Market on Hester Street for their Vegan BBQ Pork and Vegan Bacon strips, to Gabe and Kate for tasting, and to Josh Karpf for the original inspiration and his lifelong commitment to all things meat.
My friends and family are always coming and going. I sometimes follow their flights, especially when they are showing up at my door, or departing on a life-expanding adventure. It’s easy to do if I stay in front of the computer with a web page open. However, when I’m at the computer I’m usually working on something else that gets in the way, and away from the screen there’s no information at all.
For today’s 7 in 7 project I created a Desktop Flight Tracker that physically indicates the altitude of a live aircraft flight from online data. The system includes an Arduino microcontroller with embedded Internet connection and a small servo motor attached to a model jet airliner. Once the airline name and flight number is loaded into the system, the model jet rises off the desktop just as the real flight takes off. The model continues to rise as the actual plane climbs to its cruising altitude, then holds its position. (I like to imagine that tiny cocktails are being served inside.) For descent and landing, the model lowers itself to the desktop, just as the real flight touches down at its destination. Please keep your seatbelts fastened until the aircraft has come to a full stop at the gate.
In the hour or so since I got the prototype working properly, I’ve tracked a couple flights as they cruised into the New York area, descended and touched down at JFK—both informative and entertaining. Bon voyage!
I really don’t know why, but in college my good friend Dan became obsessed with clam gum. An odd obsession of course because clam gum didn”t exist. I guess he just thought it would be funny if it did.
As of today, Clam Gum is real. For my 7 in 7 project I hacked a chewing gum-making kit with clam juice and created a chompable concoction with a maritime tang. It’s weird and absolutely nobody here will put it in their mouth.
The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is featuring Botanicalls as part of its Smart Home: Green + Wired exhibit. The Smart Home is a real, three-story modular and sustainable “green” home in the Museum’s own backyard to teach about the ways, big and small, that visitors can make eco-friendly living a part of their lives.
Museum visitors are taken on a tour of the home. In the upstairs office, they get a live demonstration of a Botanicalls English Ivy, which makes a phone call to complaining about its thirst. Guests can also buy their own Botanicalls Kit on the exhibit’s web site. You can see the home and its talking plant in Chicago through January 4th, 2009.
Botanicalls is continuing with open source initiatives on several fronts. We’re applying for the Rhizome commission and members should remember to vote…for us…so that we can continue to bring humans closer to the natural world.
There’s also serious work underway to make kits available to the public, spurred along by an upcoming exhibition in Chicago. More announcements on that front soon. While you’re waiting, please vote!
Robofest is a “day-long event for youth exploring the creative world of robotics.” Kate, Jenny, Max and I were asked by Vision Ed Inc board president Marianne Petit to be judges for the DANCING WITH THE ROBOSTARS competition at Sony Wonder Technology Lab in New York City. The five competing teams of children each built dancing Lego robots, and choreographed routines for themselves to dance along with their creations. We witnessed a medieval swordplay performance, Hawaiian surfing dance, video game emulation, disco mash-up and a funk collaboration. The young inventors learned their robotics skills under the tutelage of Laura Allen, through Vision Ed Inc in New York. We loved it so much that we gave everyone a prize.
In case you hadn’t heard, we’ve made Botanicalls Twitter as a do-it-yourself example for people who like to–well–do it themselves. It’s the first step in making Botanicalls available to a wider audience, and the online press has taken note. In the last 48 hours, we’ve been graced by the attention of:
Make Magazine
CNet
Slashdot
Lifehacker
Gizmodo
Wired
…and even Business Week
Botanicalls Twitter would not have happened without both brilliant code and sage advice from Limor Fried. We also appreciate the support of Phil Torrone who inspired our Twitter venture and helped to make it a success. Botanicalls is a project from Kate Hartman, Kati London, Rebecca Bray and Rob Faludi.
We use a lot of batteries at ITP. Most of these end their life as industrial waste in our “Techo-scrap” bin, eventually to be carted off by an NYU contractor to parts unknown where their chemicals perhaps leach into places unthinkable? Maybe, not. Hopefully they’re treated with great care, but it certainly would be far more environmentally sound for us to be reusing our batteries instead of handing industrial waste off as somebody else’s problem.
Therefore to get things greener, I set up a brand-new battery recharging station to be shared by all of our students and faculty. We can charge commonly available Nickel-metal Hydride (NiMH) AAA, AA, C, D and 9 Volt cells. There’s also a small Lithium-ion coin cell charger, for special 3.6 Volt rechargeable coin cells. To help answer technical questions, a manual for each charger has been laminated and attached to the recharging station.
People ask me all the time which battery they should use for their Arduino project, or how long an XBee will run on a specific type of battery. Rather than continue to give vague answers, I decided that it would be much more helpful to generate some real-world battery life results for Arduino projects and XBee mesh networking radios. There were a lot of surprises. The results depend of course upon which battery you choose, but everything else makes a difference too. Changing the duty cycle of a single LED doubled battery life on an Arduino project. Simply sleeping an XBee radio between transmissions generated a whopping 1470% increase in battery life. In a few cases specific types of batteries failed completely–probably the most helpful test result of all.
Use the real-world battery life results to help choose which setup is right for your project. You can also use my Battery Test program in Processing to run your own tests. Send me any well-documented results and I’ll gladly add them to the list.
